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Sebastian Rodrigues Judgement

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The narrative perspectives of Silence complicate readers’ judgement about Rodrigues’ decision to apostatize. The first four chapters, each of which titled Letter of Sebastian Rodrigues, are narrated from Rodrigues’ point of view. His voice vanishes, however, with the ellipsis at the end of Chapter Four; instead, an omniscient narrator emerges. When readers see Japan through Rodrigues’ eyes, they are reading his mind at the same time. Yet, the omniscient narrator estranges Rodrigues from readers, who can access his thoughts now only by speculations. While Rodrigues’ motive for apostatizing is crucial to our judgement of his decision, his motive is a morally ambiguous one. He may apostatize out of compassion for suffering Christians, or out …show more content…

Therefore, behind the confrontation between Japan and Christianity, there is also tension between purportedly universal truth and the execution of these truths in reality. Ferreira and Rodrigues never questions the universality of those believes they uphold as missionaries. Rodrigues believes that “it’s precisely because truth is common to all countries and all times that we call it truth” (116). Granted absolute truth does exist, theoretical truth is not alive until it is delivered by men in reality. When Rodrigues’ loyalty to the Church is at odds with human compassion, should Rodrigues follow his mind, to cling to his belief as a steadfast Christian, or his heart, to save people as a fellow human being by apostatizing? Unfortunately, there is not a sanctioned solution to this dilemma available in the Bible. If its only habitat is the ornamented Holy Scripture, what is the point of truth except being used as excuses to justify missionary adventure? As Elison notes “the missionaries of the ‘Christian Century’ could not indulge in a free discourse with the heathen. That was not their mission. They came to convert Japan, not to enlighten it” (Elison, 252). It is because of missionaries’s ignorance of their own vanity and condescension that they are immoral, and also, doomed to

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